


An Afternoon in Altered London

by strangelyconflicted



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Drug use for comedy, Gen, M/M, Misfits AU, Pre-Reichenbach, written pre-season 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-26
Updated: 2016-05-26
Packaged: 2018-07-10 06:42:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6970393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangelyconflicted/pseuds/strangelyconflicted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There were advantages to having the ability to create jumpers out of thin air. For instance, during a chase on an ancient wooden pier, Sherlock not only managed to overdose the person they were chasing on cocaine produced from wood dust and his own hair, but fell into the bay as he was unable to resist having more than a bit of his own concoction. </p><p>The jumper John wove around Sherlock's twitching body had patterns shaped like anatomically-correct pancreases. He made the wool especially itchy, just to irritate the insensate detective in his arms, who was currently turning the pebbles embedded in his feet into meth.</p><p>(or: what if everyone developed powers in a freak storm)</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Afternoon in Altered London

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2012, published now. Woe. Originally prompted by a friend so... thanks to her. Heh.
> 
> (I remember writing a version where Sherlock can spontaneously make honey. I've no idea where I put that draft.)

There were advantages to having the ability to create jumpers out of thin air. For instance, during a chase on an ancient wooden pier, Sherlock not only managed to overdose the person they were chasing on cocaine produced from wood dust and his own hair, but fell into the bay as he was unable to resist having more than a bit of his own concoction. 

The jumper John wove around Sherlock's twitching body had patterns shaped like anatomically-correct pancreases. He made the wool especially itchy, just to irritate the insensate detective in his arms, who was currently turning the pebbles embedded in his feet into meth.

Bitter as he was that he didn’t get a power that could actually help them on their cases, John contended himself with the fact that he has a power. Lestrade didn’t get one, and he was in the center of the freak storm that gave John his ability to knit cashmere from oxygen. The Detective Inspector bemoaned his normalcy despite Mycroft Holmes’ constant texts that powerlessness only proved that he was A Perfect Human Being. 

John wondered why the elder Holmes was flirting with Lestrade but decided that he was better off not imagining those things.

Mycroft, not surprisingly, gained a sort of omniscience that would put Stephen Fry to shame. He showed off his deepened knowledge through him saving the day when Anderson’s abilities manifested days after the storm passed.  
Even being victimized by the same incident hadn’t made Sherlock and Anderson more amiable towards one another. The very first thing the consulting detective told his most hated Yarder when he and John arrived at the scene was:

“Please go drown yourself in the pool in the backyard. I can feel my I.Q. drop by just breathing the same air as you.”

As it was part of their strange tradition, Anderson opened his mouth to reply and John stretched his fingers to muffle Sherlock with an Alpaca-wool sock. But when Anderson started talking, a policewoman near them dropped to her knees, clutching her head. 

The other officers in the scene did the same, and others gurgled things like “Oooh, there’s a dead lady in the bathroom!”, “Like, you should totally use kitchen bleach, it’s like, totally safe and like, it’ll make your skin totally white”, and “I bet you five quid that you can’t jump from a running car to that other tree on the other side of the road”.

Beside John, Lestrade was whispering “I heard Andy got cooties from Sally” to Sherlock, who was discovering his drug-making powers by growing hollands hope on his beloved Belstaff.

They weren’t the only ones whose intelligence had been tampered with. Everyone within a one-mile radius of the site was affected, though if Mycroft was to be trusted, it didn’t really cause enough change to be noticeable. Anderson was the only person who was unaffected. 

Donovan took notice of this and thrashed several cars with her prehensile hair, angry as she was that she, in her own words, was “As weird as that Sherlock-freak, like, ohmygawd, my roots are like, so offended, I mean you didn’t even like do anything to make me normal too, and I like, gave you a handjob on the way here.”

Minutes after Donovan flipped a cab into a tree, a heavily-armored truck appeared. After subduing the angry detective, several men in strange hazard suits forced John to encase Anderson in loden wool. The effects of Anderson’s powers wore away as soon as the men locked him inside their truck. 

John was the first to recover; once he stopped knitting a horrible pink divan over a naked constable, one of the men approached him and handed over a letter before disappearing into the truck with his comrades.

The letter, John read as he and Sherlock drove away from the scene hours later, came from Mycroft. It explained why they had these powers and told John that it was imperative that he kept Sherlock from overdosing on anything he made. 

John absolutely didn’t understand how weather could give him a bollocks power. He did, however, use it to keep Sherlock from tearing clumps of his hair and turning them into peyote.

In the weeks that followed, John found out that an alarming number of his acquaintances gained powers: Mike Stamford flew past them while he and Sherlock were chasing a fugitive; Sherlock nearly stepped on Dimmock when the D.I. tried sneaking into their flat unannounced as a mouse.

Henry Baskerville, who was visiting for the weekend, had an extremely uncomfortable Sunday evening when they found out that Henry could turn into a Labrador. It would’ve been quite fine, if not for the fact that John thought that his girlfriend left him her dog, and that he spent all day cuddling and doing other shamelessly domestic things with said dog.

Faced with the reality that his flatmate’s former (male) client licked his face all over and he giggled over it, John decided that if he had to live the rest of his life with a power, he’d gladly trade his with Molly Hooper’s. 

During their first trip to St. Barth’s since John found his box of cereal turned into a box of HCL, Sherlock declared that his seven-percent solution kicked in later than he expected it to. Doors kept opening for them, their coffee mugs kept refilling, and a strange strangled sound echoed around them at random intervals. John kept an eye out for anything unusual; Sherlock was far too gone in his scientific frenzy and PCP to notice anything other than the sample of fungus he found in a vic’s throat.

It was when Sherlock took his trousers off when John noticed a clipboard on the table behind them disappear. 

Nonchalantly clicking his fingers together to begin knitting Sherlock a pair of Mohair pants, John surreptitiously observed the area and noticed that an unnatural shadow was cast on the wall behind it. 

The beakers and flasks positioned there looked unnatural, like they were highly-detailed photographs. When John moved his head side-to-side, the whole thing looked layered. A few swaying movements later, a human-shaped outline formed itself in John’s mind, and all the pieces fell into place.

Camouflage, John thought. Finishing Sherlock’s Angoran goat-fleeced briefs, he stepped behind his flatmate and, under the pretence checking if the pants had any holes, angled his body towards the spot where he saw the outline. Eyes still on the sheep dog color of the underwear, John carefully straightened up and- before the silhouette knew what was happening- lunged at his target.

His hands landed on two soft, small, spherical objects which oddly felt like breasts. A small gasp came a foot away from where he was grasping. Vaguely feeling as if he had done something terribly bad, John managed to see a whole spot of the wall above his hands go red before his vision turned black.

“I’m so sorry John, I really didn’t mean it,” was Molly Hooper’s mantra for the rest of the day, which was perfectly fine with John seeing as she smashed a heavy glass container over his head for unknowingly squeezing her chest. 

Sherlock stayed in the lab for the duration of John’s confinement. The prat didn’t notice that he was gone until some concerned students found him, sans knitted underwear, downing chewies while debating whether the suspect of their case was a 40 year-old clerk from Johannesburg or the hamster he took from a testing cage.

After being released, John asked Molly out on a date, not because he thinks her breasts are easy to hold but because he still feels horrible for lunging at her like that. Molly agreed immediately, apologized, and agreed to it as graciously as she could, which is to say she did not do it graciously at all.

The date went rather smoothly. “Smoothly” here was, of course, used sarcastically, as John had the misfortune of taking Molly to the same restaurant that Lestrade and Mycroft were eating in.

Every nightmarish thought that ever occurred to John after learning that the embodiment of the British government might just fancy his mate blew back into his mind with the force of an angry horde of flankers. It was terrifying. It was ugly. More importantly, it mixed donuts and diet charts in ways that only an LCD-driven Sherlock can terrify John with.

Molly, bless her soul, initiated the conversation with the two men. While this excused John from making any significant contribution to whatever was being discussed, it gave Mycroft time to impress upon him (with his pinning stare as his only means of communication) that this was not to be mentioned to his brother, and that he should be home right now because his flatmate might set their rooms on fire while cooking an illicit substance.

There was also a pointed side-glance towards Lestrade, who probably didn’t know that he was on a date and not on a free dinner out with a fairly-decent bloke who can give his department a nice year-end bonus. 

That part John chose to ignore: between his nightmares of the war and the fall, he didn’t need images of those two men on the job, as it were.

As he was fairly sure that Mycroft’s carefully-timed diversions was him saying “leg it”, John slipped away from the table and left the restaurant in the same black sedan the older Holmes always sends for him.

Inside, not-Anthea, whom he hasn’t seen in three days, was typing in the empty space before her.

“You’ve got a computer in your mind, then,” said John, not bothering to say his guess in a questioning manner.

A single word flashed before him: YES.

“Right.”

Silence.

“Do you want to-“

NO.

“Right.”

When he went to bed that night (after making sure that Sherlock’s in his merino and woden straightjacket), he wondered if everything could go back to the way it was. The general public was still terrified at The Storm; if they ever realized that some people got strange powers from it, there would be chaos- but what kind of chaos? Chaos from panic or chaos from jealousy?

John sat up, muttered “Must’ve put bubblegum in the tea again”, and started making jumpers until all the Serious Pothead Problems go away.

The morning after his marijuana-induced jumper-making-for-sleep binge, John went insde to reprimand Sherlock for switching his tea, only to find the pillock twitching on their flat’s floor. 

He covered his face with his palms. “Damn it, Sherlock.”

After checking that he hadn’t passed on from his own stupidity- as Sherlock Holmes was definitely the smartest dumb person John had ever had the misfortune of meeting- John shouted for Mrs. Hudson. 

He kept Sherlock’s face upright while Mrs. Hudson drew the drug cocktail Sherlock drank away from his body. Whenever he can’t take his flatmate’s refusal to stay off his own power, or when his natural skills as an ex-army doctor failed him, he called on his landlady to stave off the possibility of Sherlock dying from his unique brand of stupidity.

It was a bit unfair really. Mrs. Hudson was at the age where she should be knitting mittens by a fireplace, yet John- a real, certified medical practitioner -was the one who can literally pull lambswool from his arse.

Mrs. Hudson cooed comforting nonsense while rubbing circles on Sherlock’s temples. 

“How many times does this make it this week?” she asked.

“Three.”

“Oh, Sherlock.”

Inky-black liquid travelled up the consulting detective’s bare torso. He was shirtless again, having previously reasoned, “What’s the point of putting my dressing gown on if I can’t see my veins through cloth?”

The toxin surged across his throat, netted like dark vines around his face, and seeped up Mrs. Hudson’s fingers like it was being drained by a pipe. It coalesced in her palms and with her thumb, she molded it into a ball. When it got too big, she deposited it in the bin John put beside her before starting again.

“It’s a shame you couldn’t do this yourself.”

John nodded his agreement.

“What if he does this while the both of you are on your little adventures?”

John grunts in response.

“I’m not as young as I used to be, you know. I can’t go around jumping across rooftops. My hip, dear, it’s rather bad.”

John wonders if the ability that he got from the storm was a punishment of some sort.

The filth from Sherlock’s body was nearly filling the bin. John emptied the bin and took it back to Mrs. Hudson, who was in the middle of an anecdote. It was about a conversation she and Sherlock had years ago, way before the storm, the three year-separation, the day he and the junkie (genius) on the couch before him met. 

“… and it was right after my husband hanged- I was so glad that Sherlock put paid to all that nonsense-“

It’s a coping mechanism. He can hear his therapist’s voice echoing in his head. He’s only been back for half a year. You’re still adjusting to him alive again, and then both of you got caught in another traumatizing event. Your mood swings-

“- I said, ‘If you need somewhere to live in, an apartment of mine is free’-“

The network of black slowly thinned out of Sherlock’s body. Before he can really register it, John was crimping out a scarf in his balled-up fists. He wasn’t sure if he was making it due to anxiety or relief.

If he could camouflage himself, he could have followed this twit on his journey without putting the both of them at risk. If he could heal this prat, he could be sure the idiot wouldn’t have come back from the dead alone.

“… happy that he- oh, there you go love, he’s all fixed up now.”

It was with bitterness that he accepted that Sherlock was at least back. It took a bit more to accept that the most he could do now was learn to create bulletproof cloaks Sherlock could wear over his coat.

“Thanks, Mrs. Hudson,” said John, managing a smile. His landlady smiled back and stood up to leave. “I don’t know what we’ll do without you.”

He was about to turn back to Sherlock to check how he was doing when Mrs. Hudson took one of his hands and patted it.

“It’s alright dear,” she cooed. “It might not look like much now, but think when you’re retired. You can open up a shop while Sherlock tends to his bees.”

“Bees?” John asked, side-stepping everything that his dear old landlady wasn’t saying.

“He told me once that he wanted to keep bees when he retires,” answered Mrs. Hudson. When Sherlock mumbles something in his sleep, she put a finger to her lips, whispered, “I’ll let him tell you that story some other time”, and left John to look after his friend.

The scarf John was fiddling with throughout this interlude was nearly finished. It started with a solid color (dark blue); somewhere in the middle, it changed to stripes- light blue with darker hues. In the last segment, the colors took after the honeycomb patterns knit into the fabric: golden yellow outlined with black, with remnants of blue popping up in odd places.

If John gave it to Sherlock later, when he’s sober and a bit more like himself, he’s sure that it would be stored away. It won’t be worn as it would clash horribly with his wardrobe, but kept, probably hung around the goat’s antlers. There the scarf would join the headphones John jokingly purchased for Sherlock nearly four ago. They would look like souvenirs, prizes won from a war Sherlock fought constantly and John didn’t quite want to understand just yet.

The scarf could also go to the box that John knows Sherlock keeps in his room. The box was full of rubbish. There was an orange shock blanket, a fragment of porcelain, print-outs of a comic book site, belly-button ornaments- the sort of things that really didn’t have any worth. Yet Sherlock kept them. John knew that, if it wasn’t for his friend’s abrupt need to leave everything behind, he would’ve never found the box.

He had a lot of questions about the box, about everything really, but knew they were meant to be thought about and not answered. For now, he left them at that. It was half an hour before eight and he promised Mary morning coffee and a lift to work.

It was still strange to work pure Shetland wool into a cable-knit jumper, especially since John was working it around Sherlock’s prone body, but a sense of familiarity was rooting in his fingers. The bee-patterned jumper, and he knew his flatmate was going to murder him when he wakes up, covered the pale, scarred skin layer by layer until it went well over the detective’s hips.

John threw the scarf on Sherlock’s face and, with one last check on his pulse, left.


End file.
